


Deluge Myth

by vespirus



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Canon Gay Character, Gay Male Character, Gen, Greek and Roman Mythology - Freeform, Internal Monologue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-06
Updated: 2018-06-06
Packaged: 2019-05-18 19:29:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,162
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14858849
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vespirus/pseuds/vespirus
Summary: There was no other land,The sea had drowned it all.Only one woman left of all those thousands,And only one man left of all those thousands.You look out your window.





	Deluge Myth

**Author's Note:**

> read rolfe humphries's translation of ovid for the love of jove

You would consider yourself well read.

You took a particular interest in Grecian and Roman writings; it was an interesting combination of poetic and scientific but still absolutely wrong. Plato was an absolute bore but his theories on the division of the soul and creation of the universe was academically interesting, if scientifically laughable.

You had recently started reading Ovid’s  _ Metamorphoses _ . It was intriguing, you had found a particularly beautiful translation. It was a bit of a difficult read though. Not writing wise – it was a breeze to get through and the poetic lines drew you in and kept you reading – but emotionally.

Why did so many cultures have a story about a flood after the creation of the world? It was probably because there  _ was _ a historic flood before historical records started and the story of it was passed down from the survivors to their children and so on down through oral tradition until it was documented. But it was still fucking depressing to you. The world has just gone full circle, doubled back on it’s past like a disgusting fated ouroboros that’s destined to ruin your fucking life.

You’re still fucking here. Despite it all.

Sadly enough.

It’s just you and (miles and kilometers and so fucking far away) Roxy, the only two humans left on this shithole of a planet. And you’re a man and she’s a woman so you’re supposed to  _ propagate _ , continue the race for the greater good, keep the species alive, as Shakespeare says so succinctly through the character Benedick; “ _ the world must be peopled _ .”

So. It’s for the greater good. And all that.

On paper you should be all about this shit – you’ve spent long enough preaching to your friends about what they need to do, how they need to be changed, be pushed, in the name of the greater good, in the name of the greater  _ game _ – but you just. Can’t.

You can’t even. Just the thought of it makes you feel sick. Seeing Roxy (your best friend, your closest confidant, the only one who truly could ever even try to understand how your environment has affected you, a  _ woman _ ) in that kind of light? It closes fists around your throat that squeeze too hard and shoves a hand in your gut and just stirs that shit all up until it doesn’t know which way is up and down and the way to Carnegie Hall.

Deucalion seems to take it pretty well. That’s easy for a straight guy, you guess. Not that it matters anymore. It doesn’t matter that you’re gay, that you’re not into her, that you never will be. Those kinds of concepts were for people who lived in the world past, the dead world that you can still manage to glean an idea of from broken hyperlinks and virtual graffiti. You’re not straight or gay or anything, you’re the last man and you have a “duty,” as so much of fiction and cultural fables have crushed down on you over and over.

Deucalion was fucking chill on it, though. And it made you so, so angry. So fucking despicably angry. This man you never met, who didn’t even exist (at least not in the exact way he’s presented in myth) can handle the situation so much better and you just – can’t.

He “ _ saw that world, all desolation, all emptiness, all silence _ ” and he just cried a bit and told her “Well, you’re my wife now!” No foreplay, just straight to “ _ O my wife, _ ” and “ _ my consort and my cousin and my partner in these immediate dangers _ .” You do think of Roxy as a cousin, family, and a partner in crime and a partner definitely in these shitty immediate dangers of trolls and drones and SBurb. But consort? Wife? It feels so intrinsically wrong, your skin crawls with some horrible feeling of repulsion that you can’t name without feeling like you’re insulting your best friend. It’s not even her, it’s just – women. You can’t do it.

“ _ We two, we two alone, are all the population. Ocean holds everything else; our foothold, our assurance, are small as they can be, the clouds still frightful. Poor woman – well, we are not all alone – suppose you had been, how would you bear your fear? Who would console your grief?” _

It frightens you. You don’t know the answer to that horrible question. It’s terrifying, the thoughts this possibility conjures, the idea of a life without any support. The only foothold and assurance you own aside from Roxy is your brother, long gone now.

You need her to be there. Someone who knows what it’s like, what this horrible world has done to you. Deucalion is right in saying “ _ had the sea taken you, I would have followed _ .” You don’t want to put words to the things you would do if Roxy was gone, if something happened to her or she had never been there in the first place.

But she was. So you don’t have to worry about it (you still will). She was here and you loved her (not  _ that  _ way) and you were thankful for it. Following the story, you might even dare to call Calliope your oracle, your Themis. You might be tempted to cast her brother as Python, barely mentioned only to be called unwanted and dreaded, a giant serpent that had to be taken down by Apollo because no mortal could handle it. But that would be giving him too much credit.

But cryptic hints, things you misinterpret to be more horrifically personal than they actually are? Right up Callie’s alley. She’s a sweetheart, she does her best, but some of that stuff about destroying souls really gets to you.

Roxy doesn’t seem to have any problem throwing her mother’s bones around though. She idolizes her, the same way you idolize your brother, but it hurts to watch her chug down the bottles her mother left behind. There sure were trembling lips, and tradition (one of  _ alcoholism _ ) but you wouldn’t consider it honoring her memory. It’s hard to fault her for it though – you love her so damn much it hurts, and you’re in the “fortunate” place to understand how rough she really does have it, a place Jake and especially Jane probably couldn’t get their mind around if it were explained.

Callie had told you some of what the game had in store, one of those being ectobiology. Which probably amounts to something comparable to throwing rocks behind you that turn into humans. You never can be sure though, what if you truly do fuck up and the game never comes? What if you’re stuck here, bound to Roxy and to the things you’re supposedly honor bound to fulfill for a society long dead and a race you’ve never truly felt a part of. All you have is to wait it out and hope and pray to the Corycian nymphs, Themis, Jove, whatever the fuck might be out there listening.


End file.
